As it prepares to
launch its first full mass-market EV next year -- a plug-in
Ford Focus -- Ford has its eyes set on a large-scale
rollout. By 2015, Ford hopes to have "electrified"
vehicles -- hybrids (HEV), plug-in hybrids (PHEV), and
battery-electric vehicles (BEV; aka "all electric"
vehicles) -- make up 2-5 percent of its total sales. This is an
ambitious but seemingly achievable goal -- the company currently has
about 1 percent of its sales consist of electrified vehicles
(hybrids).

The company's target for 2020 is much bolder; it
say that it wants to boost this number to 10 to 25 percent. It
plans on roughly 70 percent of those being hybrids, with the
remainder being plug-in electrics and fuel cell vehicles.

Key
to these efforts is to perfect hybrid, pure electric, and fuel cell
systems for the C platform. This platform is Ford's largest,
selling approximately 2 million of the 4.817 million units that Ford
sold last year. Ford has over 12 different body styles --
including the Focus, Transit Connect, C-Max, S-Max, and others --
which serve as "hats" to the underlying C platform.

Ford's
director of global electrification, Nancy Gioia states, "During
this volatile period, by utilizing our highest volume platforms, by
having common parts between hybrids and plug in hybrids we are doing
the most to make this as affordable as possible during a very dynamic
time."

This approach not only saves Ford money in
production costs, but it should also help the company obtain its
electric vision. Ford will need those savings -- it plans on
complete four generations worth of batteries within the next ten
years.

Gioia says that Ford is incredible committed and
focused on its electric efforts. She comments, "There must
be a national and actually global constancy of purpose on this
journey. We are on a marathon, a 50-year journey, we are not on a 3-5
year journey. This takes an enormous amount of staying power."

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